Posted on 05/21/2008 5:39:46 PM PDT by rmlew
Another part of Bush's speech dealt with the supposed spread of "democracy" in the Muslim world:
"He [Bush] also offered plenty of praise for democratic advances, naming countries like Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan.
'The light of liberty is beginning to shine,' he said."
Is he crazy? In Turkey, the so-called "light of liberty" is undoing Kemalism, putting the secularists in the universities, the judiciary, and the army, under great pressure, and bringing Islam back, step by grim step, as Erdogan and now Gul, cleverly backed by all kinds of people, including the shadowy millionaire Fethullah Gulen, probe and prod at every possible weak point in the Kemalist system. Is this "liberty"? Is this the goddam "light of liberty"?
In Afghanistan, after all the vast American and NATO effort, the Taliban are back. And even without the Taliban, the democratically-elected members of the Afghani Parliament have shown, every step of the way, that they are mostly moved by the ideals of the Shari'a, and are happy to punish "blasphemers" with death. They are happy to deny women equal rights. They are happy to undo every bit of the reforms that Westerners initially managed to accomplish, in the legal rights of women and non-Muslims. The notion that "liberty" has come to Afghanistan is false. Indeed, had the Soviets won their war, and installed a puppet Communist regime, and had that regime acted with the kind of ruthlessness that the Soviet authorities did toward Islam during the 1920s and 1930s, that might have done more in the vein of Ataturk to eventually make Afghanistan a plausible candidate for democracy.
Iraq? Does anyone think Iraq is a place where "liberty" has arrived? It's a place where, at the moment, no one sect can arrogate complete power over the country to itself, but it is also a place where a Sunni despotism has been replaced by a Shi'a despotism, and the Shi'a, whatever their party, have no intention of sharing power in any significant way with the Sunni Arabs, or indeed to allow the Kurds to continue to dream of independence. A cosmetic compromise may be possible, in order to extract more weapons and money, over the next few years, from the Americans, but that's it.
"Morocco"? If anything, the current king is worse, when it comes to pan-Arab hostility to the West, either than his father or than Mohammed V. The ballyhooed "reforms" are nothing at all. He still retains his position because, as a Sherifian, he possesses the prestige to withstand an outright assault by the most militant Muslims. But try to find that "light of liberty" Bush prates about in Rabat, or Sale, or anywhere else in dismal Morocco, from which every day hundreds or thousands set out, determined to make it to Spain or to Italy, and from there, once they are safely in the E.U., to its farthest reaches.
The same is true with Jordan, the last country on Bush's list of places where, he claims, the "light of liberty" is spreading. Jordan remains a police state, and thank god for that, because bad as it is, what might follow the overthrow of thick-necked Abdullah and his photogenic bride would be far worse. But there have been no reforms, no spirit or light of liberty.
Bush is a hallucinator. He talks, he likes the sound his words make, he thinks they must conform to some higher reality, and he has convinced himself they must be true. He's messianic, and also a marxist, because he believes that economic well-being, or lack of it, explains the behavior of people, and that by improving the lot of Muslims, or "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East, we will do away with the "root causes" of all the distempers, and all the craziness, and all the hatred directed at Infidels.
He's still unclear about Islam, about the simplest things about Islam. He asked the Arab students whom he saw in Israel if they attended dances with Jews. The American ambassador, Jones (himself someone with deplorable views on Israel, and also exhibiting a failure to grasp the Islamic roots of the war against Israel -- because if he grasped those roots, he could not possibly be such a promoter of further surrenders of territory or territorial control by Israel), explained to Bush that such mixed dances were not exactly possible, and indeed, the very idea of such dances, among Arab boys and girls, also impossible. That Bush did not know this, that he has no real idea of what Islamic societies are like, shines from his every innocent word.
We don't want innocents running us. We want people who may not be nice, may not have such touching faith in "democracy" or any other ideal, for that matter, except the ideal of keeping us, the Infidels, from succumbing to the many-pronged assault of Islam. We can't afford the naive and sentimental lovers of something they thing is swell, something they call -- a bit too enthusiastically and too unthinkingly and too inaccurately -- call "democracy."
Time to don kevlar and nomex for the responses.
Hugh Fitzgerald has done precious little to advance the cause of freedom in these countries.
President Bush has done a tremendous amount.
The rendering of his tremendous efforts as meaningless is part of a concerted effort to help the Islamofascists establish their world order.
Let me pause here. I have just utterly and totally misrepresented the purposes of this author.
I have done this to illustrate what I think should be done with people who so consistently misinterpret President Bush.
Leaving Saddam and the Taliban in power would not and did not advance the cause of liberty. That is not complicated to understand.
But in the name of scoring pundit points, its necessary to say that cyber porn has not yet arrived at Khandahar.
Who cares?
The military and political blistering of these secular and islamic fascists was a fantastic victory for all of humanity— including those pathetic populations hunkered down in places like North Korea and Burma. Despots lost and those with courage have some modicum of an opportunity to resist the deep residue of fascism that remains in the culture.
Mr. fitzgerald, thanks for taking the side of the terrorists. That was highly illuminating. And if you don’t like being misinterpreted, well . . . good interpretations begin at home.
Sorry, can I bash this guy again?
When he mocks President Bush’s innocence about Arabs dancing with Jews, who is being ignorant here?
I nominate mister fitzgerald for the award. I think he fails to understand that the President is gently but firmly and publicly calling into question the prejudices that make this mixing impossible.
Score one for President Bush and put the dunce cap on Fitzgerald and send him to the corner of shame.
Democracy only works well in Christian nations. Bush bet the farm on a universal common desire for freedom and liberty. This gamble had to be made, because the failure of democratic reforms in these hostile muslim countries means that in order for the West to survive, we must destroy the ability of any hostile Muslim nation to threaten us.
The answer seems clear that there is no overwhelming popular desire for democracy in Islamic countries.
The next big test is whether the West has the guts to do whatever needs doing to stop the mullahs from getting the bomb. I don’t think the current crop of self obsessed baby boomers in positions of power today have the stones for it.
Robert Byrd et. al. crying on the senate floor comes to mind. A U.S. Senator, crying in public. God save us all.
Kemalism can be called many things: authoritarianism, fascism, dictatorship, secularism, modernism, etc.
It cannot rationally be called democracy. Kemal was a very great man in many ways, but he was no democrat.
History will only redeem Bush if my daughter and her Nat’l Guard buds (and John McCain) have enough ass to cash the check Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld’s mouth wrote. Right along with those three, I was blind to the long-term near-impossibility of force-feeding modern elections and representative government to fundamental Muslim tribals in Sandland.
History will redeem Bush if, and only if, we’re able to do another South Korea. Under McCain, we’ll, hopefully, set up some kind of client state, leave enough troops to keep the opposition nervous, declare victory, and move on. If Obama takes over, we cut and run amd wring our hands as the Iraqis convulse and collapse and kill, just like we did when the North Vietnamese slaughtered their way south in ‘75.
Good response, lonestar67. Thank you.
I lived in Turkey for a year, and your comments about Kemalism are spot on. Erdogan and Gul are simply trying to displace one authoritarian system (Kemalism) with another(Islamism.) Erdogan: “Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it to where you want to go, and then you get off.”
The “light of liberty” in Afghanistan is producing a pro-Taliban government.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.